Imagine a picture puzzle.... It comes in a box filled with
hundreds of pieces. When assembled, it may depict a landscape, perhaps,
with large swatches of blue sea and blue sky. Imagine my mind is like
one of those picture puzzles, and so is yours. I take one of those blue
puzzle pieces, give it to you, and declare, “Here's a bit of
the picture in my mind. I give it to you so you can see the picture I
see.”

Stephen Colbert, speaking at Knox College,
observed:

Cynicism is a self-imposed blindness

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom,
but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics
don’t learn anything.
Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness,
a rejection of the world because
we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no.
But saying “yes” begins things.
Saying “yes” is how things grow.
Saying “yes” leads to knowledge.

to be wise is to see

I'm intrigued by the notion of seeing as a metaphor for learning
and for understanding. I'm also concerned about wisdom, how we apply our knowledge,
and how we make decisions. So it caught my eye when Canadian blogger Dave Pollard
mentioned that the word “wise” originally meant “to see”.
The Online Etymology web site reveals

Do you see what I see? Do I see what you see? How do we compare and communicate
what we see?

Have you ever been with other people while looking at one of those optical illusions? Have you ever been the one person who couldn't see what everyone else sees? It's frustrating! It's easy to suspect they're just playing a prank.

Or, have you ever tried to help someone to see “the other image”?
That can be frustrating, too. “Well, if you kinda squint your eyes this way
and turn your head...now do you see it?”

In a way that experience is the whole point of this web site. It's the point of
my other web sites, too. Can I see what you see? Can you see what I see?
How do we acknowledge and demonstrate that we see?

It seems to me that our culture often tries to tell us there's only one thing
that can be seen. Ever. If we see something else, well, we'd better keep it
to ourselves. Our culture tells us, “This is a picture of a vase.
It's only a vase. If you think you see something else in this picture, well,
you're wrong! Because it's a vase.”

We have 24-hour “news” channels, and magazines and newspapers and
radio stations, all to remind us that this is a vase — and only a vase.
Vase, vase, vase. Wait! Breaking news! “Some nut claims to see faces
in this picture. Har har har, isn't that quaint? Faces! Now back to you,
Sue, with the 5-day vase forecast.”

A wonderful study group that I have participated in for 20 years now
began with our teacher producing exactly these two graphics. Over and over
again during these two decades, we have tried to be aware of the moment when our
perception of the matter we happened to be discussing reached the transitory cusp,
the point where an old understanding gave way to the new, not by vanishing but by
becoming an alternative interpretation.

I take that piece from the sky portion
of my mind's picture puzzle, but you find it fits best in the sea
portion of yours.

“Thanks!” you say,
as you join my sky piece to your sea puzzle. And off we go, cheerfully
believing we have accomplished something, that we have communicated.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The single biggest
problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken
place.”

Sometimes I think of it as the illusion of information. If I
hand you a blue puzzle piece from the picture in my mind, but I don't
describe the surrounding picture from which it came, I set up both of
us to misunderstand each other, to miscommunicate, to see only an
illusion of information.

This site offers a collection of puzzle pieces. These are the
pieces I find most helpful to create a coherent picture of the world
around us.